The Tucson Unified School District will pay $35,000 for a consultant to overhaul its student code of conduct.
Arguing that the existing document reads like the criminal code, Superintendent H.T. Sanchez asked the Governing Board to approve the expenditure Tuesday.
“The student code of conduct as it exists now is templated off of the penal code and speaks to student disciplinary actions as a law enforcement officer would,” Sanchez told the board. “If we want to change the environment and the ambiance around discipline from being something that is inherently negative to something that is more constructive, then we really need to have a code of conduct that speaks to that.”
TUSD, like districts across the country, has struggled with disproportionate discipline of minority students over the years.
Though in-school discipline, in-school suspensions and long-term suspensions decreased in TUSD last year, compared to the 2013-2014 school year, the number of short-term suspensions increased by 15 percent.
Hispanic students, who make up the majority of the district, were underrepresented in all discipline categories. The opposite was true for African-American students, who only account for about 5 percent of TUSD’s population.
The way in which TUSD’s student code of conduct is written came as a surprise to Sanchez, who worked in several Texas school districts before arriving in Tucson.
“Their codes of conduct are a lot more user-friendly and student-friendly in the sense of understanding what the levels are, what the consequences are and what the supports are,” he said. “They’re not written like this.”
TUSD Governing Board President Adelita Grijalva feels a re-write of the code of conduct is much needed.
“The complaints I have had as of late have been regarding the (code of conduct) and how difficult it is to navigate and how unclear it is to a lot of people,” she said. “I do think it is a document that needs to be worked on.”
While TUSD Governing Board Member Mark Stegeman agrees, he voted against awarding the consultant contract, questioning why an external party was needed to conduct the work.
In justifying the use of a consultant, Sanchez explained the job would go beyond making the document easier to understand. The scope of work also calls for conducting community outreach to ensure input from parents, students, teachers, principals and those involved in the district’s desegregation case is incorporated.
That community outreach should result in more community buy-in, said TUSD legal counsel Julie Tolleson.
Past revisions of the student code of conduct by administrators have left some teachers feeling powerless to address bad behavior in their classrooms.
“I think the strength of this process is having teachers and others affected by the document there,” Sanchez said. “And it’s not going to be a central office person managing the process, so people can feel free to say ‘I think that’s bad, I think that’s going to create more problems.’ ”
Though the scope of work states that TUSD seeks to create a document that focuses more on restorative practices and interventions, and less on mere disciplinary consequences, Sanchez understands that balance is needed.
“I don’t think a code of conduct that leans one way or the other too heavily is good,” he said. “If it’s too permissive and focused on intervention, it’s not good. If it’s too strong and just focuses on consequences, it’s not good. It has got to be a balance between both.
“You have to know when to impose the consequence and you have to know when to impose intervention.”
The new student code of conduct is expected to be ready for the upcoming school year with training for teachers and administrators being done before then.
The consultant, Jim Freeman, has experience in this field, previously serving as the senior attorney at Advancement Project in Washington, D.C., where he directed the “Ending the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track” project.
He has facilitated stakeholder groups to develop school discipline policies for numerous school systems, including in Denver and Baltimore — models recognized nationally for improving academic achievement and school climate.
In 2014, Freeman was appointed by President Obama to serve as a commissioner on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African-Americans.
